Blogging Beijing

The 2008 Summer Olympics will punctuate three decades of development and test China's global legitimacy. They've already transformed the way millions of people think and live. Seattleite and Fulbright researcher Daniel Beekman brings you Beijing.

Today, China began to officially honor those people who perished as a result of the May 12 Wenchuan Earthquake in Sichuan province. At 2:28pm, the country observed three minutes of rememberance - seven days after the natural disaster began.

According to the Associated Press:

China stood still and sirens wailed Monday to mourn the country's tens of thousands of earthquake victims, as the search for survivors increasingly became a search for bodies. Construction workers, shopkeepers and bureaucrats across the bustling nation of 1.3 billion people paused for three minutes at 2:28 p.m. - exactly one week after the magnitude 7.9 quake hit central China. Air-raid sirens and the horns of cars and buses sounded in memory of the estimated 50,000 dead.

Millions of Beijingers paused. Workers stopped working. Students lowered their heads. Drivers parked their cars. Behind a chorus of horns and sirens, the city's birds kept on chirping.

Sympathetic Sounds (original audio) - Haidian District, Beijing

China's central television stations, CCTV1 through CCTV9, ran earthquake coverage all day. Beijing's television stations followed suit. For the most part, programming consisted of: live updates from the relief effort in Sichuan, compassionate messages from viewers, graphic rescue montages set to music, interviews with survivors and heroes, and scenes from today's three-minute observance.

A television reporter conducted interviews outside of the Bird's Nest - Beijing's new National Stadium, where the Opening and Closing Ceremonies for the 2008 Olympic Games will be held. One interviewee remarked, 'In spite of the earthquake, the Olympics will succeed."